Month: May 2017

“I think poverty to a large extent is also a state of mind. You take somebody that has the right mindset, you can take everything from them and put them on the street, and I guarantee in a little while they’ll be right back up there. You take somebody with the wrong mindset, you can give them everything in the world, they’ll work their way right back down to the bottom.” -HUD Secretary Ben Carson

When I heard Dr. Carson say this on Fox News, the homeless community in Bucks County, PA came to mind.

Some people in the Bucks homeless community, who have lost practically everything, have moved on up. They had the right attitude, values. They didn’t engage in or even listen to malicious gossip They stopped or didn’t do drugs, excessive drinking, heavy smoking, gluttony or other bad habits that would keep them down. Instead, they kept plugging away, trying to improve themselves and relentlessly looked for and found work and housing, or are at least on their way to getting a place to live.

Conversely, those in the homeless community who bear and circulate false witness/gossip, do drugs, continually get drunk, smoke like chimneys, and gouge themselves like they are at a Roman banquet keep them down and out, and they tend to become miserable.

Dr. Carson’s view about the consequences of your attitude is dramatized in the comedy film Trading Places. In the movie, homeless street hustler Billy Ray Valentine trades places with the rich commodities broker managing director. While in the whirlpool, Billy Ray reflects on his childhood, saying “we used to have to fart in the bathtub to get bubbles like this.” With his new found wealth, Billy Ray throws a party, populated with low life who trash the place out then split.

But Billy Ray rises to the task! Given a chance, he learns the commodities business, acts well mannered, and becomes successful.

In Bucks County, the system offers to take care of the homeless and doesn’t encourage them to better themselves. The subtle thinking among government and other elites in the county is that of a caste system, where once you are homeless, you will always be homeless. They keep the homeless down by offering them handouts – low cost housing and disability to help pay for it, replacing tents and sleeping bags when the users destroy them…

As Dr. Carson said, there is material poverty and poverty of the spirit. A member of the Advocates for The Homeless and Those in Need (AHTN) let two homeless people off the hook for having sex one morning in the homeless bus shelter. The whole group got punished by having the shelter torn down and the bus stop moved to the middle of the parking lot in the Bucks County Government Center. Other homeless people were banned from the Levittown public library for fighting and cursing, where formerly stood the bus shelter, where the couple’s love grew under its umbrella. They are now in government housing, at taxpayers expense. In the past couple of years, he worked two different jobs and walked off both of them. I heard from a reliable source that he had a pattern of working just long enough so he could quit then get financial assistance.

The same AHTN member who helped get Don Juan and his lover off the hook did the same for a homeless guy who came to a community meal drunk and became disorderly. Despite loudly cursing a blue streak and viciously physically attacking another guest, which took three of the hosts at the Redeemer Lutheran Church in Penndel, PA, he was allowed to continue to ride the AHTN bus (which on paper doesn’t allow anyone to come on the bus drunk) and go to the meals. The victim, who basically rope-a-doped, was banned from the bus and the meal at Redeemer. I believe it’s in the best interests of AHTN to enable bad behavior among the homeless. After all, that’s how they are supposed to act. Isn’t it? And isn’t that what keeps AHTN in business?

Your attitude and values have much to do with your lot in life. Your circumstances should not dictate your joy. Seasons of happiness come and go, but you can have joy in the Lord.

“Be careful how you think; your life is shaped by your thoughts” –Proverbs 4:23

The recovery homes in the Levittown, PA vicinity have been a plague on the community since they began. Crime has mushroomed (or grew like peyote) since these government backed, money hacked flop houses invaded Levittown, like aliens in a science fiction movie.

As if there are not enough dopes (why do you think they call it dope?) in the general population today who are potential customers! The recovery houses are a perfect market for selling drugs. You don’t have to go fishing for customers! It’s good, however, the guy was caught, but there are a lot more fish in the sea!

That druggies are victims – the conventional wisdom says that “drug addiction is a disease and not a moral failing”, doesn’t hold these losers accountable for a foolish choice they made. Nope. Not their fault!

By calling drug abuse a disease, the government has a better, but P.T. Barnum like, slick marketing tool. This way the taxpayer feels he is helping humanity with a natural disaster, like an earthquake or malaria.

In Levittown, where the druggies go and make the yellow snow, people who have become homeless and are not a menace to society struggle to find a place to lay their head. Because of the all the druggies being discharged into the shelter, there is a long waiting list.

The druggies, who have chosen behavior destructive to themselves and others, are allowed to live in neighborhoods. The homeless are blacklisted!

The druggies also took to the woods. And as a result, the non threatening homeless had to move out. Bucks County Chief Ranger, Steve Long told me the raid on the homeless in Queen Anne’s Park came after complaints from neighbors about drug use – needles and other drug paraphernalia were found. The rescue squad had to go there more than once because of over doses. The woods were trashed out.

The recently defunded Bucks County Mental Health Hustlers have been known to drop off their rejects from the Penndel Mental Health Center made worse through drugs, albeit legal drugs, at the Veterans Memorial by the Levittown Library, who wonder like animals through the woods. The only difference between their shrinks who wantonly hand out drugs and drug pushers is that they may wear lab coats while the pushers wear trench coats. In either case, people still get messed up.

The woman accused of arson at a car dealership in Levittown, who, along with other homeless people were graciously allowed to camp in cars, had, according to the Bucks County website, a record to “Manufacture, Delivery, or Possession With Intent to Manufacture or Deliver”. Evidently, drugs were involved. As a result of her actions, people are going to be more reluctant to help the homeless with shelter.

Not all homeless people are druggies. But because druggies increasingly end up in the homeless population in Bucks County, it gives people the impression homeless people are all druggies. They all aren’t!

Drug abuse is a problem everywhere, particularly in Bucks County, PA. Mollycoddling drug users, blaming drug dealers and others is not going to resolve the problem. Drug abusers, like others who engage in other besetting sin, need to own up to their sin and cowboy up.

“I don’t really understand myself, for I want to do what is right, but I don’t do it. Instead, I do what I hate.” –Romans 7:15 The first step of the 12 Step Program, which has historically been successful, is based on this principle. This program has been used for drug abuse and other problems by getting to the root of the problem.

“A man driving a gold SUV took a carton of Newport cigarettes after his credit card was denied at the Exxon Tiger Mart on east Old Lincoln Highway in Langhorne at 2:37 a.m.” reads the May 16 Middletown Township police log. Just had to have that cigarette!

Unless you’ve been living on another planet, you know that opioid addiction has been getting lots of attention. Although there are many stop smoking ads out there, the attention cancer stick addiction gets pales in comparison to drug abuse.

A 12 Step Program in Levittown got lost in space after its leaders jettisoned themselves from the building and evidently turned the meetings into their own private club. The original leader left and flew south and passed the baton onto long time participants in the program who have learned to keep their bad habits at bay. I kept attending the program under the new leadership until one day when I showed up at the church I learned the group was meeting in someone’s home. The pastor gave me his phone number. I called but it was getting late and I decided not to go. I also remembered that I’d be smoked out. I didn’t save the number.

The original leader’s phone number is still on the website. Then, I called and got a recording that the number is not in service. I just called, got a recorded message for voice mail but it didn’t say whose number it is. I think someone else must have that number. http://12stepjourney.com/

The regular 12 step program attendees could keep their drinking problems at bay, but not smoking. They puffed away like chimneys up until the time they went into the one hour meeting and lit up as soon as they walked out the door. When we met outside when the church was closed for repairs, they smoked the whole time.

There were a lot of special programs going on at the church the day I found that 12 Steps wasn’t meeting there. I thought the crowd of kids caused the guys to decide to meet that night in someone’s house. No matter when it was decided, I think moving the program into someone’s home is permanent and they like meeting there because they don’t have to go an hour without a smoke.

The 12 Step program really helped a lot of people. It helped me. There are still such programs operating in lower Bucks County, PA. They are free and close enough that homeless and needy people can take advantage of a program that can help them get their acts together. With the so-called support groups in Bucks County PA being defunded that allegedly helped the homeless, the churches should step up hosting 12 Step programs, where peers and leaders are genuinely interested in helping people and are not just about making money and building their egos.

The 12 Steps started with Alcoholics Anonymous but expanded to other bad habits and behaviors, including anxiety, depression, and feelings of resentment. The program gets to the root of problems.

Just saw a stop smoking ad on TV. It cited an example of someone who died from 2nd hand smoke. The off camera narrator pitched [sic] “if you know someone who needs help quitting smoking…”

As I said in my blog Sister Nicotine and The Holy Smokes, smoking is more than a bad habit to many – it’s a religion, a false one that is harmful. God can help you overcome destructive behavior driven by character flaws. Recently I passed a sign in front of the community church in Newportville, PA that reads “You can’t walk with God if you run with the devil.”

“For I know the plans I have for you,” declares the Lord, “plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future.” -Jeremiah 29:11

“Government is not a solution to our problem government is the problem.” -Ronald Reagan

People without homes in Bucks County, PA have gotten them in a timely, honest manner not through government, but by taking responsibility, initiative and moving forward. No matter what the reason for being homeless, those in that situation have moved on up by not getting down by addictions or their attitude, but by pressing on, looking for jobs or just finding constructive ways of improving themselves, educating themselves, even volunteering.

Having a pity party or joining in malicious gossip, perpetuating lies to lift yourself up at the expense of others is not the way out. Nor is the answer found in the bottle or drugs.

The government in Bucks County operates under a sort of caste system, a mentality imported from eastern religion which has become the silent mantra of the liberal establishment.

Contrary to the headline in the March 29 Courier Times Funding Woes Hurt The Homeless, the defunding of HOST and PATH, predatory programs that target the homeless to get them into a failed taxpayer funded mental health scheme in order to keep the homeless in their proper place in the caste system, actually benefits them. It’s one less lure to avoid responsibility. If taken in by this scheme, the homeless become like Gregor in Franz Kafka’s The Metamorphosis, a parable about a young man who has trouble getting out of bed in the morning so he doesn’t have to face the day after he wakes up as a cockroach. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Metamorphosis

I was approached by a “recovery coach” from HOST a couple years back after I lost my house. He offered to help me get housing if I submitted to being labeled as being so messed up mentally that I could no longer work and go on disability. I didn’t take the bait. Others who can work have gone on disability and on the public dole, taken care of by the government. A ward of the state, living off of other people’s labor.

The recovery coach told me that he doesn’t believe in housing first and explained that people have to get straightened out before they can be on their own in a dwelling. Evidently, he thinks he is clairvoyant, and knows the inmost thoughts of homeless people. Only God knows that.

Progressives have replaced God with government. Unlike God, the government is imperfect, run by humans, all of us who are flawed in one way or the other and to various degrees. The root of liberalism, the problem that has plagued our society, is explained in this blog: https://wigtunes.wordpress.com/tag/francis-schaeffer/

People who have found homes in lower Bucks County are those who have overcome obstacles – unemployment, illness, substance abuse. Their attitude. The didn’t get bogged down in malicious gossip, looked for and found work, didn’t squander their money, and those with substance abuse problems worked through their problems, with God’s help and principles, taking advantage of the historically successful 12 Steps program (some churches in Bucks County host 12 Steps programs). Instead of dropping out of society and becoming a bum, they become viable, productive members of society. Industry, rather than sloth, has helped them become whole.

Administrators in Bucks County have asked The Minister of Silly Walks for more funding so they can make our walk much sillier. To their chagrin, President Trump has already defunded the minister’s department.

According to R.I. Diculous, Bucks County plans to fund an initiative modeled after the well established Build-A-Bear. Instead of putting parts together to build a bear, Bucks’ program, Build-A-Bum, will make bums out of the parts of homeless people.

“Anyone who has been stealing must steal no longer, but must work, doing something useful with their own hands, that they may have something to share with those in need.” -Ephesians 4:28

Hobo, tramp, and bum are terms associated with homelessness. There is an important difference:

Hobo: Someone who travels from place to place looking for work

Tramp: Someone who travels from place to place but avoids work

Bum: Someone who doesn’t want to work or travel

Among the homeless in Bucks County, PA, there is a mixture of hobos and bums. The “hobos” in Bucks County fit the hobo definition in that they work but they don’t move around very much.

Many in Bucks County’s homeless population want to work and many do, although often temporarily, sometimes part time. Tonight a guy told me his temp to perm job was going to be permanent. Being a hobo is nothing to be looked down on, although some do. In the 1893 edition of Funk and Wagnalls dictionary, “hobo” is defined (for those of you in Doylestown) “An idle, shiftless wandering workman, ranking scarcely above the tramp.” This is unfair! Wrong!

The term was used rightly during the great depression to describe people who were forced off their farms, which failed largely as a result of big government intervention, and on the road, often hopping freight trains, to look for work and food. http://livinghistoryfarm.org/farminginthe30s/water_07.html

The Joad family in John Steinbeck’s The Grapes of Wrath is a fictional particularization of this. Many smaller farms folded as a result of FDR’s New Raw Deal, where the government paid well connected big farm conglomerates to burn their crops in order to raise prices, while people had to scavenge for food.

The difference between the “hobos” in Bucks County and during The Great Depression is that in Bucks County, most of the homeless who work and are looking for work stay within the county.

Tramps are virtually non existent in Bucks County. There is enough incentive – handouts – for someone who doesn’t want to work to stay in Bucks County, and become a bum.

At tonight’s community meal for the homeless and those in need I met people who recently became homeless. The woman said she thought this would never happen to her, and she’s trying to deal with it. As is the case with others, she said she became ill and had other problems. And like other “hobos”, she works, looks responsible and acts civilly. I she hadn’t told me, I wouldn’t have known she was homeless.

“Hobo” sounds like a harsh word, mainly because how others who have never experienced homelessness judge the homeless. “Homeless” also has negative connotations. The urban dictionary includes the word “hobophobia”, which means the irrational fear of the homeless. The cure for hobophobia is a dose of homelessness – to see how it is to walk in others’ shoes.

Hobophobia is the main obstacle for providing homes for the homeless, just about anywhere. There are plenty of vacant properties in Bucks County, which the homeless could fix up, maintain, and manage, given the chance.

For example, the Sunbury Farm property in Bristol Township would make a great place for the homeless. Bristol Township, which said didn’t have the funds to keep it up, sold it to a builder a year ago. Today it’s boarded up. Maybe come Halloween, the township could use some homeless people to host a haunted house. There is so much hobophobia in Bristol Township, however, the township may not want to assume liability for having the homeless even participate in the event. http://levittownnow.com/2016/05/02/sunbury-farm-property-purchased-by-builder/

It’s ironic that druggies can live in houses in a neighborhood, but for the homeless, there is no room in the inn. Crime has mushroomed in areas where there are recovery houses. People are homeless for different reasons, such as prolonged illness or job loss. People do drugs because of a choice they willfully made, and duh, they need money to keep up their destructive habit. Ergo, they steal!

And people have come from miles around to go to the thrill, up on the hill. The thrill up on the hill let’s go! The pushers and the dopers will all be there…

There are about 100 recovery houses in Levittown, PA.

Consequently, the alleged emergency shelter in Levittown has a waiting list. It’s become a flophouse for druggies, drunks, and other miscreants, at the expense of people who just need a place to stay as a result of job loss or other problems, and who are not a threat to the community.

The Bucks County Mental Health Hustlers, the guys who prey on homeless people to try to get them to sign up for their programs and encourage them to become bums, should by now have at least one of their programs defunded – Host, run by Allen Johnson. Keith Smothers said that his program, PATH, which is really redundant of Host, will be negatively affected. On the front page of the March 29, 2017 Bucks County Courier Times, the headline reads “Funding woes hurt homeless.”

Wrong!

“They say losses of funding still could bury the homeless individuals even deeper, especially those with mental illnesses or substance abuse problems,” the article continues. “Especially those with mental illnesses or substance abuse problems” They need Allen Johnson and Keith Smothers to save the day!

Even by the by the Bucks County Department of Housing and Community Development’s count of 551 individuals living in emergency shelters (the de facto flop house for druggies and drunks) transitional housing and outside, 106 were labeled as having “mental illness” and 85 were said to have substance abuse problems. This is much less than half, by their own count! At the community meals I’ve been attending for three years, I can scarcely count on one hand how many people are off the wall so much they are not ready for society. We all have problems, and being homeless is a problem. But we don’t need no stinkin’ taxpayer funded, high priced head shrinker to deal with any of these problems. (I doubt shrinks help anybody but some people at least need to be under wraps).

What the homeless need, besides housing, is understanding, acceptance, encouragement and guidance. For those with substance abuse problems, some churches in lower Bucks County offer 12 Step programs, which gets to the root of problems, whether they be alcohol, drugs, anger, depression, anxiety, harboring resentment…

In an earlier article, on LevittownNow.com, Bucks County touted that its “Rapid Rehousing Program” got a homeless guy out of the woods after only three years! The county waited until he got sick enough so, instead of helping him become a productive member of the community, helped put him out to pasture. These vultures watched the former cross country truck driver’s downward spiral until he no longer became a viable human being. http://levittownnow.com/2017/02/19/bristol-organizations-help-homeless-man-find-permanent-shelter/

Maybe now that HOST is defunded, Bucks County can try funding the BBB program. Bucks Builds Bums! It will replicate HOST, but just be under another name.

People can be restored, if it’s done the right way. As someone at the community meal said tonight, help people with housing and from there they can iron out any problems. Housing and mental health are separate things.

The Bucks Mental Health Hustlers act like they are playing Marco-Polo. Someone says “Homeless”, then someone says “Mental Health.”

“For I will restore health to you, and your wounds I will heal, declares the Lord, because they have called you an outcast: It is Zion, for whom no one cares!” Jeremiah 30:17

Señor Quexada has read so many books about knights in shining armor that he thinks he is one. He gives himself a name more fitting for a knight — Don Quixote — and sets off one evening with his squire. Likewise, the sophomoric protesters who march to save the environment from climate change think they are our knights in shining armor. They’ve learned a few buzzwords and, like Don Quixote, are on a quest to save us from, to quote a line from an email I got from the League of Conservation Voters, “Donald Trump and climate inaction.”

Like Don Quixote, the climate change protesters don’t see the world for what it really is. In the Spanish novel, Don Quixote sets off on an adventure at dawn with his squire and comes across large windmills he believes to be ferocious giants.

“Just then they came in sight of thirty or forty windmills that rise from that plain. And no sooner did Don Quixote see them that he said to his squire, ‘Fortune is guiding our affairs better than we ourselves could have wished. Do you see over yonder, friend Sancho, thirty or forty hulking giants? I intend to do battle with them and slay them. With their spoils we shall begin to be rich for this is a righteous war and the removal of so foul a brood from off the face of the earth is a service God will bless.’

‘What giants?” asked Sancho Panza.

‘Those you see over there,’ replied his master, ‘with their long arms. Some of them have arms well nigh two leagues in length.’

‘Take care, sir,” cried Sancho. ‘Those over there are not giants but windmills. Those things that seem to be their arms are sails which, when they are whirled around by the wind, turn the millstone. ‘ “

The quixotic “environmentalists” are attacking windmills. For those of you in Doylestown, “Quixotism (/kwɪkˈsɒtɪzəm/ or /kiːˈhoʊtɪzəm/) (adj. quixotic) is impracticality in pursuit of ideals, especially those ideals manifested by rash, lofty and romantic ideas or extravagantly chivalrous action.[1] It also serves to describe an idealism without regard to practicality. An impulsive person or act might be regarded as quixotic.

Quixotism is usually related to “over-idealism”, meaning an idealism that doesn’t take consequence or absurdity into account. It is also related to naïve romanticism and to utopianism.” -Wikipedia

President Trump is eliminating the windmill attacking, job killing, economy hurting regulations of his predecessor. Coal miners, for example are going back to work. The war on coal is over. As The Temptations sang:

“Birds are singing and the children are playingThere’s plenty of work and the bosses are paying “

I’m glad that, in Bucks County, PA Congressman Brian Fitzpatrick is not buying into the climate change agenda. Recently, a quixotic environmentalist complained: “Brian Fitzpatrick doesn’t actively fight for our environmental values.” said Steve Cickay of Newtown. “He has set the bar incredibly low to fool his constituents that he is an environmentalist and that is deceptive and wrong. We deserve better. We want someone who will fight passionately for clean air, clean water, and clean energy and against the ugly Trump environmental agenda. We will continue to hold him accountable until we get better.”

The common lie among these types is that President Trump, et al, is against clean air, clean water, and clean energy. No evidence of such; just empty talking points mantra. As was the case with the windmills, there is no basis in reality.

The environmentalists cause is a war on fossil fuels and capitalism and about redistributing wealth and control, at the expense of the poor and middle class. And our health. As was the case during the late 20s and 30s, this kind of system results in rampant poverty and homelessness.

We don’t, like that environmentalist wacko said, need better. We have better!

God gave man dominion over the earth for our use. We are to be good stewards of what he has given us. This is what we are doing!

The heavens belong to the LORD, but he has given the earth to all humanity. -Psalm 115:16